Israel Matzav

Anti-nuke group slams Fiat, J Lo for sales in Iran

I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here - I've never seen Jennifer Lopez's advertisements for Fiat.

United Against a Nuclear Iran has posted this video parody on YouTube which uses J Lo to slam Fiat for selling cars in Iran.

Let's go to the videotape.



Here's more:

"Thousands of our supporters have been writing to Fiat, and expressing their opposition to Fiat's continued irresponsible business in Iran," UANI President Mark D. Wallace said in a written statement.

...

UANI has contacted Lopez and Fiat executives "regarding Fiat's business in Iran and the Iranian regime's human rights abuses and nuclear ambitions," but said it has received no responses.

Read the whole thing.

UANI is declaring victory because it claims 30,000 people have watched the video. My counter says 15,000, but even if it were 30,000, that's not quite viral yet. J Lo has one video with nearly half a billion(!) views.

More importantly, Fiat has not stopped selling to Iran and J Lo has not demanded that Fiat remove her from their advertising. It's kind of early to declare victory.

What's worse is that Fiat is not the only car still being sold to the Iranian market. One of the commenters on the YouTube video posted a lengthy list of cars being sold in Iran. It includes Toyota, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Rover, Ssangyong, Audi, Subaru, Volkswagen, Renault Leon, Altea variety of heavy vehicles, construction and mining equipment from leading manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz, Renault, Iveco, Mann, Kamaz, Caterpillar. Iveco is a Fiat subsidiary, and I'm kind of surprised to see Caterpillar there (it's an American company). Most of those companies are German and Japanese; Renault is French. Fiat may well be asking why they are the ones being picked on rather than the others. And the truth is that we should be going after all of them.

Bottom line: It's a neat video and it's a step in the right direction, but it needs a much broader application (and two of the founders of UANI read this blog so if there's a reason they targeted Fiat and not the others and they allow me to share it with you, I will).

Labels: Iran, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:29 PM